To understand how the Boston Celtics feel about Fab Melo, just look at the details of Thursday's trade sending him and cash considerations to the Memphis Grizzlies for Donte Greene.

The Celtics essentially paid the Grizzlies to take Melo off their hands, accepting in return a 6-11 forward who didn't play a single second last season and -- I'm making an educated guess here -- could be waived at some point during the season. Releasing Greene, whose contract does not include guaranteed money at any point during 2013-14, would put the team underneath the luxury tax threshold. Additional trades that could keep Greene in town are possible at some point, but nobody else on the team holds a nonguaranteed deal.

At the very least, Greene provides a small bit of roster flexibility that the Celtics didn't have prior to the trade. As president of basketball operations Danny Ainge said in early July, "You don't want to pay tax just to pay tax."

The trade's an obvious admission: After the Brazilian's rookie season and an unsuccessful week at the Orlando summer league, the Celtics considered Melo a sunk cost. Roster flexibility was more important than finding out whether he can one day whip himself into shape and grasp basketball's intricacies.

The Syracuse product had a year to demonstrate improvement and failed to show enough. Looking back at the 2012 draft, the Celtics probably considered him worth a risk because of his size and potential, and the fact that very few difference-makers were left on the board. But a year into the experiment they decided they'd seen enough. No matter how many times Melo viciously slammed the basketball off the backboard during recent drills at IMG Academy, the Celtics had already concluded he wasn't worthy of further investment.

During his lone season in Boston, Melo appeared in just six games, notching just as many personal fouls (7) as points. He was more successful during 33 games for the organization's D-League affiliate in Maine, but even there, one brief, brilliant and record-setting week could not hide the fact that he still lacks most basketball skills and awareness.

Watching him was hoping for flashes of potential (they sometimes came, often in the form of a nice blocked shot) while realizing an airballed jump hook was almost as likely. At the Orlando summer league, teammates often responded to Melo's top contributions by doubling over with laughter -- the way teenagers might with a high school scrub, except Melo will be guaranteed $1.3 million next season as a professional basketball player.

Unless fans attended D-League games in Maine or watched them on YouTube, they rarely got to see Melo. He almost existed more as a collaboration of several (mostly hilarious) stories than as an actual human being. His legend, if you want to call it that, did not take long to grow. At the rookie transition program, he broke a chair by sitting on it, then explained with a smile: "I think the chair was too weak and accidentally it happened. I lost weight, I'm good now, it's not that I've gained weight." He was later voted the funniest rookie by his peers.

In January, before he'd appeared in a single NBA game, Melo suffered a concussion while walking into a door frame in a Sioux Falls hotel room. The Celtics called him up so their team doctors could offer treatment.

"We're going to have some Fab being Fab moments," explained Doc Rivers, then the Celtics coach. "He just took kind of a head start. Literally."

In the hours after Memphis acquired Melo, Twitter user @PrescottRossi went back into the archives to retweet several basketball minds discussing the center last season. The tweets, some of which I embedded below, are as entertaining and disbelieving as one might imagine:

Fab Melo took a charge on Nick Young and it was everything you'd hope it would be.

Before that string of old tweets, I reminded you of the time Rivers said Melo literally had a head start. But the center did not have a head start in basketball and is still trying to catch up from well behind. After his struggles as a rookie (which resulted in Boston giving up on him, as judged by the trade), it's easy to wonder whether the team made a big mistake in wasting a first-round pick. But a quick glance at the players selected after him shows no obvious superstars and very few impact players.

While the Celtics certainly would have preferred Festus Ezeli or Draymond Green in retrospect, the lack of elite talent behind Melo makes it easy to see why they took a risk on a 7-footer with potential. Some, like the Boston Herald's Steve Bulpett, might even say they sold their stock in him too early; he's still only played the sport for a handful of years, never learned man-to-man defense at Syracuse, and could still develop into a useful center at some point in the coming years.

Personally I'm not sure Melo will ever develop into a useful player; despite his size and athletic upside, he's provided little proof that he might. The Celtics obviously don't have much faith he'll ever make an impact, either, or else they would have held onto him past his rookie season. They desperately need a center to patrol the paint, but still they dealt Melo in an apparent attempt to keep their roster options open.

The end result: Fab will be Fab somewhere else, and I doubt his former team's too disappointed to see him go. As the old saying goes, slightly adjusted, just don't let the door frame hit you on the way out.